LAURA MUNSON

A writer for over 20 years, Laura Munson is the author of theNew York Times and international best-selling memoir, This Is Not the Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness. Passionate about “finding the intersection of heart and mind and craft on the page,” Munson shares a story that explores marital crisis and imparts a message of empowerment, the importance of living in the present, and the necessity of claiming responsibility for one’s own happiness – no matter what is going on in life.

It all began when Munson penned an essay, “Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear,” for the “Modern Love” column of The New York Times in 2009. Stunned by the firestorm reaction she received, Munson emerged as the face behind an essay that ignited dinner talk, office chat, and book groups around the globe. A short version of a memoir she had written during a rough time in her marriage, the essay touched people with its powerful honesty. And they wanted more. After having written for two decades, having completed 14 novels, and having endured countless rejections, Munson had a book deal within 48 hours. Her memoir has been published in nine countries.

Munson’s work has appeared in the New York Times ”Modern Love” column, the New York Times Magazine ”Lives” column, O. Magazine, Woman’s Day, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, More magazine, Shambhala Sun, The Sun, and Big Sky Journal, as well as on HuffingtonPost.com and through many other media outlets. She has been on two national book tours with appearances on Good Morning America, The Early Show, London’s This Morning, Australia’s Sunrise, various NPR stations, and many other television and radio shows, including Dr. Christiane Northrup’s Hay House radio program.

VIDEO
I have heard from so many of you as my book is now published in nine countries. And I hear over and over, “When I was reading your book, I felt like I was sitting on your screened porch with you, having a cup of tea. I feel like we’re friends.” So I made this video. This is for you. This is what I’ve been up to in the last few years. These are some of my audiences and some of my speaking topics. You have all inspired me. Thank you.
yrs. Laura
Here is the youtube video. Please enjoy and share:VIDEO

For 13 years I had one consistent role and I performed it well. It’s been my primary area of expertise and with it I have molded social groups and inspired movers, shakers, and decision makers. I’ve given sustenance to the thirsty, hungry, sick, needy and taught the illiterate to read and write. I’ve served as professor emeritus in the fields of Comparative Religion, English, Earth Science, Physics, Chemistry, Music, Ethics, Political Science, Economics, Architecture and others. Without me, there are small civilizations that wouldn’t have thrived. Ok, one very small civilization. Comprised of two people, a king, and a queen. The king has spent these years ruling other civilizations by day. The queen has stayed at home, ruling the one of which I write. And the civilization has thrived in every way the queen hoped in health, wealth, and wisdom.

Until she quit her day job and became a businesswoman.

The civilization, as you have surmised, is my family. The queen is me. The king, my husband. While it’s a woman’s liberated “civilization,” it’s fairly traditional. My husband has been the bread-winner. I’ve stayed home with the kids. Both of us happily so. I love creating teaching opportunities with my children, doing art projects, gardening, cooking, playing games, reading. I’ve been that mother at the kitchen counter with her kids on chairs next to her, hulling strawberries for jam to can for Christmas gifts. I’ve spent hours singing them folks songs, their fingers taking rides on mine as we crawl up and down the piano keys. It’s been what you might call, “an enviable life” in the house of my motherhood. I’ve been deeply grateful for the choice to be at home with my children and it’s fed me like nothing else.

I’m also a writer. I’ve been writing since college, and so I entered motherhood knowing my craft, working during their naps, freelancing to help with family costs, and indulging my greatest personal passion: novel writing. I’ve written many novels over the years — not all good ones; many of them exercises in learning. So while my kids learned to walk, talk, eat, cut paper, use glue… I grew as a writer. All-the-while, I had a dream: to get a book published. To have readers. To speak at bookstores and in libraries across America. To write something that would help people in the same spirit of my motherhood. Only this dream was about my journey, not theirs.

I believed this was a healthy thing to teach my children, when they were old enough to wonder what I was doing in my office. “Mommies and daddies have lives of their own and that’s a good thing.” I’d put my hand on their chests and say, “I’m always here in your heart. No matter what.” And put their hands on mine and say, “And you are always in my heart.” Their knowing nods told me they understood.

Still, after a publishing rejection, I’d say, bittersweet, “Thank God I’m not published yet. How could I justify leaving my kids when they’re so young?” But deep down I was conflicted. I wanted that dream to come true with all of that heart that lived in them and lived in me. It was an inner war I fought every day.

And then in 2009, I got a book deal and everything changed. I had to rethink my motherhood. Suddenly deadlines had me seat-belted to my office chair for long hours, breaking only for meals. Homemade sauces percolating on the stove were forgotten for, yes, Stouffer’s frozen lasagna. A who-are-you-and-what-did-you-do-with-my-mother was in order, and I got it in eyeball rolls, dramatic exits, and out-of-the-blue crying fits. But the truth is that dream or no dream, a change in my husband’s career meant that we desperately needed the money. And this was what presented itself in the way of livelihood. I had his total support and my children’s blessing, so they said.

But then the travel began and I became a second-class citizen in my own home. I’d return, haggard after 12, cross-country, back-to-back events in 10 days, and the kids would ignore me. Suddenly it was “Dad, I need you to sign this for school,” and “Dad, where are my cleats?”

I liked that he was such a presence in their daily lives. I didn’t like that I wasn’t.

So I hired a therapist. “You need to tell them this is what career success looks like for now. Things are different. They’re still safe. You still love them. Children are manipulators. You’ve done nothing wrong.” But it didn’t feel that way. I felt that I had done something very wrong. And maybe it was because of the mother I’d been all those years.

Would they have been better off in day care? More well-adjusted, flexible, less reliant on a mother who eagerly pushed them on the swing of life; answered every why-is-the-sky-blue question. Maybe Legos don’t count as Architecture, and lemonade stands don’t speak much for Economics, nor Chutes and Ladders for Physics, nor bedtime discussions about God for World Religion, nor patching up playground-politics-gone-amuck in the way of Ethics. Maybe those efforts feel like a slap in the face when the creator of them is out the door again with her roller bag and a plane to catch.

In all my career dreams, I never imagined I’d lose my power in this little civilization. Or that I’d fail it. And no matter how many hugs I give, or muffins I make, or soccer games I drive eight hours in both directions to support… I can’t seem to redeem myself. Maybe it’s because they’ve had to swallow a sudden bitter pill: their mother is a human being with dreams and needs and talent. Didn’t they know this? Did I sell them a myth in Band-aids and bedtime stories? Did I omit the fact that dreams-come-true sometimes take you far from home? Why must I be the first to break their hearts?

In the face of adversity, people throw this phrase around: That which does not kill you makes you stronger. It’s supposed to be one of empowerment. But to me, it’s not empowering at all. It’s a hopeless helpless statement, as if we have to go to the edge in order to grow. Sure, sometimes that’s how it works– this beautiful and heartbreaking thing called life. The edge is a very real and sometimes dark place. And coming back from it, whether physically or emotionally, can be vastly powerful. For the purpose of this essay, however, I’d like to depart from the topic of physical pain, and focus on emotional pain. Because in the realm of emotions, I think we need some serious tweaking. We have cultivated a society that is all-too-often propelled by victim/victor thinking. I’d like that to change. This is a war we don’t need to wage. We can actually find peace in emotional pain. Because emotions are our choice. It’s all about awareness and re-training your mind.

How? Let’s start here: Language. I’ve been paying attention to the way we speak as a collective We, and I’ve noticed some dangerous trends. We often mince the physical with the emotional. I think it confuses us and sends negative, disempowering messages to our entire being when we do so. Your back isn’t “killing” you. It might be in pain. But it’s not “killing” you unless you have a very real disease, and that’s a different subject altogether. Your husband didn’t “make” (physical) you mad (emotional). Your sister didn’t “make” you sad. Your mother-in-law didn’t “make” you feel guilty. Again, cruel actions are real, and emotional pain is real too, but it’s how we engage someone’s actions—how we relate with them, that determines our emotional state. The responsibility is ours. No one else’s. If someone punches you in the face and you get a bloody nose, that’s another story. You are a victim of that thrown blow. But emotionally, it’s different.

I invite you to re-read the above quote and ask yourself, again in the realm of emotions: Can a heart really break? Does pain really kill? Can anything really “make” a person emotionally grow?

So much emotional pain comes from words. In the moment someone throws us a verbal blow, we have a choice. Sometimes that blow is so unbelievably cruel that we feel it has lodged in our emotional world without our permission. But that’s actually not possible. We have, sometimes at the speed of light, chosen to give it the power to hurt us. And that’s the moment at which I’d like to see us pause. Become aware of what’s going on. Aware of our choices. What’s at stake. What’s worth our anger, our tears, our hatred, our guilt. We think there’s a bridge there that we have to cross. There isn’t and we don’t. I can’t say this enough: We choose our emotions, good, bad, ugly. And so often we choose to be emotional victims.

But here’s the thing: I don’t believe there really is such a thing as an emotional victim. (This is where some of you might be considering sending me some big bad “love” letters. Don’t. Send yourself a real love letter instead. And in it, ask yourself if you want to be free. Or if you have grown used to certain bondage…)

Let’s define “victim.” My dictionaries use these definitions, in addition to human sacrifice (which might actually be the most relevant definition): A person or living creature destroyed by, or suffering grievous injury from another, from fortune or from accident; an unfortunate person who suffers from some adverse circumstance.

In other words, a victim is someone who suffers incontrollable consequence because of someone or something else. But there is a giant hole in these definitions. Emotionally, HOW does that suffering occur? And is it so given?

This exercise might help. Imagine the last time someone said something hurtful to you and your response was one of emotional pain. Imagine if that person had said, Pass the salt instead. How does that feel? Less threatening? Are you less triggered? Now imagine that you’ve prepared a lovely meal that took you hours and into which you put all your culinary expertise. And a beloved family member, without even tasting the food, says, Pass the salt. Now that Pass the salt could be taken as an insult. You aren’t a sufficient cook. You’ve been slighted, underestimated, judged. You are less than. And there you are: at the bridge. You do not have to cross it. You can simply pass the salt. Or not. Maybe that person just really likes salt. It’s really none of your business. It’s a free country.

Now…I’m not saying to suppress your emotions or to hold your tongue. Of course there are times to let those words come careening at you over the bridge and to react to them in high emotional candor…but still, you are in control of what that looks like, feels like. You can still take your pause no matter how fast those words (or actions) are coming at you, and decide to invite them into your emotional state—to choose to attach meaning to them and thereby react. But remember, you have options. No one can choose them for you.

AND, this may come as good news to you: emotional hurt doesn’t need to look like a tantrum. You can sometimes just say, “Ouch.” And what happens, in that case? In my experience, the words or actions go running back over the bridge, or jump in the river and float away. Let them run around somewhere else other than in your being. They can just be words or actions even if they are cruel ones. You do not have to take them personally. Even when they’re meant personally.

I fought this awareness for a long time. I wanted to believe that someone could emotionally hurt me. I was used to walking around with my finger out, placing blame, rather than making the daunting decision to take responsibility for my emotions. Emotional suffering had become my normal. I chose to play victim all too often. And I was sick of it.

I realized, quite suddenly in a therapist’s office, that I was choosing to emotionally suffer at the flung words and actions of people. I was choosing to let things outside my control determine my emotional state. I was choosing to suffer. So I started changing the way I related with emotionally painful moments. When I met with those hard moments, rather than play victim, I’d ask myself powerful questions– Did I want that sadness? Did I want that anger? Sometimes the answer was, yes. But if so, I wanted to powerfully choose that yes. I wanted to be in charge of how I translated painful emotional experiences. And statements like That which does not kill you makes you stronger didn’t help one bit. I think a far more helpful statement came from Eleanor Roosevelt: No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. We are in charge of our emotions. Period.

I’ve been going around the country talking about this at conventions, universities, reading series, wellness centers, etc. because I wrote a book called This Is Not The Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness (Amy Einhorn/Putnam). It’s been published in nine countries, so I do interviews all over the world, and I’ve come to see that there are many many people out there who don’t want to receive this message. It means they’d have to get out of blame, out of victor/victim thinking…and into personal responsibility. They’d have to tell themselves a new story about where their power really lies. They resist, complain, deny, and make ferocious overtures in the comments section of websites…and sometimes I even get a personal “love” letter. (see above). Why is this so? I’ve thought about this long and hard. Here’s where I’ve landed: They get to be right. It’s an I told you so reaction that supports a story they told themselves long ago. “See the world stinks. See, I’ll never get that job, or that relationship, or that break.” That is bondage. I’m not interested in bondage. I’m interested in freedom. Are you?

A lot of things have been blessings in disguise from this journey of book, but one of the greatest ones has been knowing that my words are reaching people all over world. Wow. Wow. The UK has been amazing. So have been the Auzzies and Germans. Thank you.
Hearing from a blind woman in Israel who tells me that my book helped her through the greatest loss of her life and that is the death of her seeing eye dog to cancer. This is the power of story. To know that my words, written here in my small room in Montana, are being translated around the globe: well that is just hitting me. And it’s hitting me hard. Today I got my words in Chinese.
And recently in German. Soon in Dutch, Italian, and in Taiwanese.
Universal truth is universal truth. It crosses oceans and countries and cultures. Thank you.

If you haven’t stepped into my house during the day, you wouldn’t know what it sounds like. There is NPR on low in the kitchen, an occasional UPS delivery and thusly, the occasional sounds of a golden retriever and a black lab barking, gravel being rolled over by truck wheels. Sometimes there’s the sound of a sump pump in the basement throbbing like a hospital breathing machine. Sometimes rain gushing from gutters. Sometimes errant flies caught between the window and its screens. And from May to August, birds. These sounds come and go and I am their only witness.

If you walked into my home and I didn’t know you were here, you’d also hear the popcorn of my computer keyboard, right when it’s really popping there at the end, before it burns. You’d be my witness. You’d hear first and then see if you walked to the sound coming from the small room at the foot of the stairs, that I write. All day. And have since 1994 when I stopped working fulltime and became a fulltime writer. I’d been writing inbetween jobs since 1988, but my steady writing life really began when we moved to Montana and my husband took a well-paying job running a brewery– which meant I finally had the time to put my total energy into finding the intersection of mind and heart and craft that is writing. And then the babies came, but I still wrote during their naps and at night after they went to bed, and then when it was time for them to go to school, I had my days wide open again to write. From 9:00 until 3:00, more or less, once first grade began for the last child. That happened six years ago. Since then, I’ve written and I’ve mothered.

I get down and dirty with the tuna fish and the mayo and the deli meat and the peanut butter at 7:00 am, slicing apples and carrots and putting them into small waxpaper bags for school lunches. I serve up French toast with warmed real maple syrup in yoga pants and a fleece and my hair in a scrunchie, trying to take advantage of the ten minute ride into school– everything always a teaching moment. There’s a lot of philosophy and world religion and English 101 on those drives. And then the popcorn pops all day. And then I return to the school at 3:00 to escort my children to their music lessons and sporting practices and games. The “how are yous” from other parents are met with “I’m fine. How are you?” And the conversation wanders around in the field of parenting, sharing opinions and concern for local issues from the sidelines and parking lots that house our public lives. But privately, I have another world with no witnesses save for flies and dogs. Privately, I write.

And then my dream came true. I got a book published. And everything changed. I got to serve the popcorn. And people ate it and wanted more. And I went around the country serving it up in whopping portions. It turns out, I make good popcorn. And people paid me for my popcorn. And then flew me around so I could serve up more of it. And put me up in fancy hotels and drove me around in limos. Man, I never even knew that my popcorn would really ever be eaten, much less eaten like that! It was really really satisfying. I’ve been told, my popcorn even has changed people’s lives. (OK– I beat the shit out of that one. Sorry Strunk and White. Outside of metaphor-land, I always burn the popcorn, for what it’s worth.)

Suffice it to say, I’ve been gone a LOT for a year or so. Sometimes for two whole months. At one point, I couldn’t remember what grade my son was in. At another, I found out that my daughter had started Driver’s Ed. Who wrote that check? Who signed that permission slip? The answer is: my husband. And it’s not like I wrote a book about a small tribe in Africa. I wrote about writing. I wrote about a hard time in our marriage. I wrote about practicing what it is to live powerfully right there at your kitchen sink when the world tells you you’re a victim. I wrote about lifelines– canning tomatoes with my children, digging carrots from my garden, picking huckleberries, learning how to breathe deeply…rather than exploding in pain and agony. I wrote my way through this time to help myself and to help other people. I went public with my deepest thoughts and emotions. And even though it’s not really a book about marriage, let’s face it: my husband was going through a major crisis of self, and I reported on what that looked like. Not to expose him, or my children, but to expose me. My book is about my journey– my committment to stop basing my happiness on things outside my control. The publishing world, my marriage, all of it. And somehow, the world wants to hear that message. And somehow, my husband has the grace to know that our story is helping people, even though it’s no one’s first choice to be depicted in a time of personal crisis.

When I am out of town, and even sometimes when I’m here and things are busy in this little room at the bottom of the stairs, here’s what that grace looks like: he wakes up, gets down and dirty with tuna fish, mayo, deli meat…well you get the picture. He signs the permission slips and writes the checks and drives the kids to school and has those conversations and picks them up and escorts them around to their after school activities. He has those conversations with other parents in the parking lots and sidelines. And on top of that, he works. His work day is compacted because of it, like mine used to be. And when I return from my travels, I can see it. They are in a rhythm. And it works. I am not part of that rhythm. I am so grateful for what he is doing in my absence and in honor of my dream come true. He is the reason I can publicly be my book’s messenger.

I will admit here that it’s also a haunting experience, re-entering my house and my family life and seeing how it has worked without me in it. It’s like I’ve died and I’m looking from the afterlife into this farmhouse in Montana. Wow, look at that– the windows got washed. The windows haven’t been washed in ten years! Gosh that’s a big pile of laundry. Has anybody fed the dogs? I’m not at all comfortable with my son going to that kid’s slumber party. But these are not my calls to make when I am on the road. I have to let go. I am not home. You relinquish a certain level of your parenthood when you travel for business or if you work late hours. It’s like the opposite of sending your kid off to college. YOU are in college, as it were.

I tell you all this because it matters to me that you know, if you too have suddenly catapulted out of your daily regime as a parent and are feeling…well, a little scared of what that means to your kids and spouse. A little guilty. A little overcome by the new rhythms of family. I tell you this because I have compared notes now with plenty of working mothers and fathers whose work brings them far from home. And I’m here to say that, as long as it’s not constant, as long as there is balance and regularity and a system in place that works…you are setting a GOOD example for your children. You can have your parenthood and your job. You can have your dreams come true in your field of work and still be a good parent. If it happens quite suddenly…it can be a shock at first–for everyone in your family. And there are conversations that need to happen. There may well be abandonment issues that need to be worked out with a therapist. I check in with my kids about this regularly. I want them to know that I am not choosing my work over them. But rather that work is part of life. Knowing them, they will work hard too, and hopefully it will be doing something they love and hopefully the world will receive them into it and hold them up to their best selves. That’s what I’m trying to do with my life. Be my best self. Which means that sometimes, I have to leave my family and hit the road.

So to my family, thank you. Thank you thank you thank you. And yep– your mother’s back. Brush your teeth. Don’t slouch. Take off your hat at the dinner table. And no, you can’t go to that kid’s slumber party. And to my husband, thank you for marrying me as the woman I am, and not only the mother that I am. But p.s. I don’t do windows. Way to raise the bar! I love you.

A year after my book release, I am more and more clear just what my book’s message is and what people appreciate about it. I wrote an essay for the Divorce section of the Huffington Post today that I think really nails it. Pass it on if the spirit moves you. yrs. Laura

“Ever hear about the power of positive thinking? Ever wonder what it looks like in real life? Ever run up against some rocky places in your relationship that scare the crap out of you? If you answered yes, read this book. Now. I for one devoured it in 24 hours. It’s pure real life illumination.” —–Dr. Christiane Northrup, Author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom

Well, today marks the birth of my book baby in paperback! THIS IS NOT THE
STORY YOU THINK IT IS: A Season of Unlikely Happiness (Amy Einhorn/Putnam) hits a bookstore near you as I write, scrambling to pack for what will be almost two months on the road. My head and stomach are buzzing with excitement and the usual nerves, knowing I will be encountering so much energy out there that I don’t have in my quiet little Montana life. Some
of the highlights I am particularly thrilled about are: Speaking at my alma mater, Denison University, tomorrow , going on CBS’s The Early Show on the 11th, being a panelist at the Reinvention Convention in LA on the 23rd of May, hosted by More magazine, with fabulous co-speakers like Rita Wilson, Lee Woodruff, Christy Turlington, Mel Robbins and many other inspiring
women.and reading at some of my favorite bookstores across the country. The one which will be most full circle, is the Harvard Coop in Cambridge, MA, where I got my first job out of college working at a flower shop, writing my
first novel, and spending my lunch hour turning pages in that hallowed hall. I have heard from so many Parelli people this year and I want to say thank you for all your supportive, generous, spirited mail and blog comments. I
feel a kindredness with horse people and to that end, I want to share a small moment with you.